


Lost Beneath the Sea-change

by Ghostinthehouse



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, They just don't remember, Yuletide Treat, no one actually dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: When Bran pulls out the blue-green stone, Will slips his hand in his pocket and cups the one he was given. Something to remember us by, he thinks, and glances off towards the sea and the Lost Land.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Lost Beneath the Sea-change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vashti (tvashti)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvashti/gifts).



The Signs are gone, but the chain they hung from isn't. Will fills the gap for now with a red ribbon that could have come from the Mari Llwyd and wraps the belt around his waist under his clothes.

Step by step, walking down the mountain, its weight settles against his hips the way that the weight of the world settles against his shoulders. It becomes a familar sensation, hardly noticed until it shifts and pulls his attention sharply back into focus. It's a weight, he knows, he will never be able to set down completely. Perhaps it's for the best that it becomes so familiar that he can almost forget it's there, that he can lean into it and learn to share the little things of humanity as if he were truly one of them.

When Bran pulls out the blue-green stone, Will slips his hand in his pocket and cups the one he was given. Something to remember us by, he thinks, and glances off towards the sea and the Lost Land.

And perhaps, perhaps he will make something of the chain. Not something of the Light, or of the Dark, or of Power, but just of memories, like this stone. Something to anchor the ragged ends of the loving bonds that were snapped between him and the other four when Merriman buried their memories. He's no Wayland Smith, but he does have the skills his father is teaching him, and access to the shop.

***

_Hawthorn for the body, rowan for the head...power from the greenwitch._

He makes a hawthorn leaf to remind him of Jane, green enamel nestled in copper almost as red as rowan berries. He hums as he works, a wordless tune he once sang to the mountain echoes, and they sang back, summoning the Lady to speak to Jane, and the enamel glimmers under his fingers. _I wish you could be happy_ , she had said once, but happiness is not a Watchman's duty, only awareness.

_Silver eyes that see the wind_

Lost Cafall is memorialised in a silver pawprint. Like one of the thousand prints and seats left by Arthur, only this time for his son the Pendragon. The son who was allowed to choose, unlike the Three from the Track, and gave it all up.

_Fire shall fly from the raven boy_

He crafts a flame for Bran, for their odd friendship, but it isn't enough, somehow. He finds himself making a dragon too, coiled heraldically in on itself, for the Pendragon he once was, and the father of the High Magic who gave him his power. The two parts become the halves of a buckle, and when he fastens it, the dragon breathes the flame.

_A blaze on every hill_

Bright, joyous, laughing Barney is an eye. The Sight, and an artist's sight too, with a paintbrush forming the slit pupil like a cat. A sketch of a ship hovers in Will's memory. The White Lady, Wild Magic as she is, is probably still around, he realises with a lift of his head and his heart both. He may be alone of his kind, but he is not the only one still taking the long walk through the centuries ahead and that is a thing he can hold to.

_A shield for every head_

Simon is hardest. Most human of all of them, farthest from Will.  _Iron for the birthday._ Protective of his siblings, would-be doctor, sheltering authority and stubborn strength. Will thinks for a long time before he shapes a miniature round shield from gold. A knight's shield, made to defend those weaker and younger than the bearer. A shield like those once made for the Light, left in places they might be needed, yet never used to their full extent.

_With your shield or on it_ , he thinks ruefully, recklessly, and walks on without it anyway into this new kind of darkness, leaving the other four behind him. He is the watchman on the wall, the guardian of the Doors, young in years, and old before his time. He lifts his eyes to the distant hills of Wales, and holds his tongue, for now the mountains no longer sing - and the Lady, she whose name he never truly knew, who told him only to think of her as "the old lady", she will never come again.

_Six Signs shall burn_

His memories and connection with Merriman are too complex to distill down into a single image, but he shapes one anyway. A circle, quartered by a cross. A symbol of the Light, but not a Sign. The Signs burned away in the final rising, and he puts no power into this one. Or at least, no more power than the shape itself contains. He makes it from glass, clear and bright and cold, because glass is meant for looking through, not for seeing for itself. It feels unfinished, though, until he embeds the blue-green stone in its centre, where the lines cross, because the circle as a whole is gone. He alone remains at the heart of it, and where else should the Watchman be but at the crossroads? What has the Watchman left to do but watch the roads as they stretch out from him in all directions?

_All shall find the light at last_

He wraps the renewed, reforged, belt back around his waist and feels it settle there, neither burning with cold against the Dark, nor welcoming the Light with warmth, but simply taking on the human warmth of his body. It reflects the human ache of the broken bonds, for this is humanity's world now, from the evil that lives in their hearts to the gifts in them that shine as bright as Eirias. Humanity in all its pain and joy and beauty and fierce unending hope. And he? He carries the hope that some day these loving bonds can be reforged like the belt. Loving bonds, beyond even the control of the High Magic, and stronger than anything else on Earth. But for now... For now, he is the Watchman, carrying a lantern to light the paths ahead, calling and calling.  _Five of the clock and all is well!_


End file.
